Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary prompts government ads worth crores A galaxy of ads - colour, black-and-white, half-page and smaller - all starring Rajiv Gandhi were nestled, many of them adjacent to each other, in today's newspapers. They varied in cost between one and four crores each, depending on whether the ad was created and placed by a private ad agency or by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), which coordinates the advertising needs of different government departments. At the former prime minister's samadhi (memorial) in Delhi, Mr Gandhi's wife, Sonia, who is the Congress president, was seen along with her daughter, Priyanka, at a service that was also attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The government has not been unaware of the irony of PR campaigns having the opposite effect. So the Information and Broadcasting Ministry recently suggested that on special occasions, there should be just one ad placed on behalf of all ministries, and that the government's DAVP should coordinate its placement, because it is entitled to discounts from newspapers. The Finance Ministry is meant to drive home this point to other departments. The steel, commerce and power ministries are allegedly the worst offenders, often hiring private ad agencies to design and run their ads. Written rebukes from the Cabinet Secretary have been ignored, say sources, by ministries who like to prove to the party's leadership that their ...